Park Güell

Park Güell is in Barcelona, a city in Spain by the sea. It sits on a hill.

An architect named Antoni Gaudí designed it. He filled it with curvy shapes and bright colors.

Park Güell is on a hillside in Barcelona, in Spain, with views over the city and the sea. It was designed by the architect Antoni Gaudí for Eusebi Güell, who wanted to build homes there for well-off families.

Today it is a public park. UNESCO lists it among seven works by Gaudí in and near Barcelona that together form a World Heritage Site.

Park Güell occupies the hill once known as the Muntanya Pelada, or 'bare mountain', which the park's official history describes as a healthy setting with splendid views over the sea and the plain of Barcelona.

UNESCO includes it in the serial property 'Works of Antoni Gaudí', seven buildings in and around Barcelona that show his very personal style in architecture, gardens and sculpture. UNESCO notes that the park is still used as the public park and green space it was designed to be, now with tourist and cultural uses too.

When it rains, water from the big square drains into a tank under the ground.

If the tank gets too full, water pours out of the salamander's mouth!

Gaudí designed ways to collect and store water. Rain that falls on the big square above the Hypostyle Room runs through a channel to a tank under the ground. When the tank is full, the extra water comes out of the salamander's mouth.

He also kept the carob and olive trees already growing on the hill, and chose Mediterranean plants that need little water.

A conduit in the architrave of the Hypostyle Room collects rainwater filtering down from the square above and sends it to an underground tank, whose overflow is the mouth of the stairway's salamander. The official history adds that Gaudí designed systems for collecting and storing water, based on irrigation he had known in his rural childhood.

He respected the existing vegetation, such as carob and olive trees, and chose Mediterranean species needing little water; plants and water management together helped prevent erosion from heavy downpours. The long tiled bench around the great square was completed in 1914.

In this photo, the salamander has blue, yellow and white tiles on its back and big green feet. Can you find its open mouth?

This photo was taken in June 2004. It shows the salamander up close, covered in pieces of blue, orange, yellow and white tile. Its feet are green, its mouth is wide open, and water is running out of it.

The white tiled walls of the stairway curve around it, with plants below. At the top, you can see the legs of visitors standing on the steps.

The photograph (June 2004, by Baikonur) shows the salamander on the Monumental Stairway: a body clad in shards of blue, ochre, yellow and white tile set with round knobs, green tiled feet and an open mouth, between the white tile-covered walls of the stairway.

The house in the park where Gaudí lived opened to the public as the Gaudí House Museum in 1963, thanks to the Friends of Gaudí.